Category: War

This is Significant

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Donald Trump spoke at CPAC, and he was booed when he called for ground troops in Iraq to fight ISIS:

In the same question and answer period with Sean Hannity, he [Trump] embarrassed himself yet again when he outlined his strategy to fight ISIS, which was nothing more than “he’d hit them really hard.” With what? We don’t know, but when he supported sending ground troops against ISIS, the crowd turned on him.

Hannity: A, to stop Iran’s nuclear program and B, to defeat ISIS, cause I don’t hear say degrade them, I hear you say defeat them.

Trump: Defeat. Well, with ISIS, I’d just hit them really hard and that would probably and a year ago you wouldn’t have said it and nobody wouldn’t have likes it, you may have to have some boots on the ground for a period of time until you’re rid of the cancer. (boos) That’s number one, you may have to have it Look, they’re cutting off the heads of people, they’re burning at the stake, It’s like we’re living in medieval times.

(emphasis original)

Unfortunately, the video has been deleted by the user, but the fact that the crowd at CPAC, who have pretty much defined themselves as the wingnuts of wingnuts, have come to the conclusion that the John McCain school of foreign policy is without merit is significant.

If the war forever has lost the CPAC crowd, they have lost the nation.

I Think that This Provides a Lot of Insight into Russian Views on the Ukraine

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Saker, of the blog The Vineyard of the Saker, is definitely a Russian nationalist and an anti-Semite, but he is fluent in Russian, (He might be Russian) and does have his finger on the pulse of much of Russian society, so his missive on Russian perceptions of the intentions of the US with regard to Russia are a worthwhile read:

I parse the Russian media (corporate and social) on a daily basis and I am always amazed at the completely different way the issue of western sanctions is discussed.  I think that it is important and useful for me to share this with those of you who do not speak Russian.
First, nobody in Russia believes that the sanctions will be lifted.  Nobody.  Of course, all the Russian politicians say that sanctions are wrong and not conducive to progress, but these are statements for external consumption.  In interviews for the Russian media or on talk shows, there is a consensus that sanctions will never be lifted no matter what Russia does.

 Second, nobody in Russia believes that sanctions are a reaction to Crimea or to the Russian involvement in the Donbass.  Nobody.  There is a consensus that the Russian policy towards Crimea and the Donbass are not a cause, but a pretext for the sanctions.  The real cause of the sanctions is unanimously identified as what the Russians called the “process of sovereignization”, i.e. the fact that Russia is back, powerful and rich, and that she dares openly defy and disobey the “Axis of Kindness”.

 Third, there is a consensus in Russia that the correct response to the sanctions is double: a) an external realignment of the Russian economy away from the West and b) internal reforms which will make Russia less dependent on oil exports and on the imports of various goods and technologies.


Fourth, nobody blames Putin for the sanctions or for the resulting hardships.  Everybody fully understands that Putin is hated by the West not for doing something wrong, but for doing something right.  In fact, Putin’s popularity is still at an all-time high.

 Fifth, there is a wide agreement that the current Russian vulnerability is the result of past structural mistakes which now must be corrected, but nobody suggests that the return of Crimea to Russia or the Russian support for Novorussia were wrong or wrongly executed. 

I think that his statements that “nobody in Russia” believes various things is overstated, but when you have Mikhail F%$#ing Gorbachev saying that the US and NATO never ended their side of the cold war, it is safe to say that the Russian public and elites generally believe that they are the target of low level hostilities from the west.

I can’t say that this perception is wrong:  It appears to me that there has been a long term campaign to reduce Russia to a client petro-state.

Our Private Little War is Going so F%$#ing Well

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With a ceasefire coming into effect on Sunday, the Ukrainian rebels have seized the strategically significant town of Debaltseve:

Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko called Wednesday for an international peacekeeping mission in his nation’s war-torn east, a stark admission that his nation can no longer fend off pro-Russian rebels after a major battlefield defeat.

 Any international force on the ground would harden the battle lines after 10 months of fighting, forcing Ukraine to give up for now its attempts to reunify the nation. But it would also halt Russian-backed rebels from pushing onward toward Kiev.

 The suggestion came hours after thousands of Ukrainian troops fled the encircled railway hub of Debaltseve, where fighting only intensified after a cease-fire ostensibly took effect Sunday. Nearly a year after Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula, the fresh loss threatened tough political consequences for Ukraine’s pro-Western president amid questions of how the troops became surrounded in recent weeks.

 Soldiers described a chaotic nighttime retreat over eastern Ukraine’s frozen steppe, with shells raining down on them from two sides.

It’s gotten to the point that even the German press are starting to condemn Victoria “F%$# the EU” Nuland and her role in creating this conflict.  (Google translate link)

The Europeans have begun to realize that following the reckless and bellicose US policies has created nothing but headaches for them.

It also appears that it’s creating headaches at the Brookings Institution as well:

A new report co-produced by the Brookings Institution is not going over well within the think tank. The report calls for an escalation in tensions between the United States and Russia with a recommendation for the US to supply the government in Kiev with $3 billion worth of weapons. The report also had contributions from the Atlantic Council and the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. One of the authors of the report, Michele Flournoy, is expected to be selected as defense secretary should Hillary Clinton win the White House and operates a think tank underwritten by defense contractors.

Brookings Institution fellow and former US State Department official Jeremy Shapiro took direct aim at the report in a piece titled “Why Arming the Ukrainians is a Bad Idea.” While acknowledging it was difficult to write the rebuttal given that his boss, Brookings Institution President Strobe Talbott, had co-authored the report, Shapiro nonetheless took apart the report’s bellicose and reckless recommendations:

The Ukrainian calculus is one of immediate desperation. But the United States needs to think for the longer-term. And if U.S.-provided weapons fail to induce a Russian retreat in Ukraine and instead cause an escalation of the war, the net result will not be peace and compromise. There has recently been much escalation in Ukraine, but it could go much further. As horrible as it is, the Ukrainian civil war still looks rather tame by the standards of Bosnia, Chechnya or Syria. Further escalation will mean much more violence, suffering and death in Ukraine.
The report authors counter that if the United States does not stand up to Russia in Ukraine, the Putin regime will be emboldened to make similar mischief all over Europe and beyond. This is the familiar credibility argument that gave us the war in Vietnam, among other misadventures. In fact, U.S. credibility is not enhanced by making bluffs that we will not ultimately fulfill or by embarking on wasting wars that we do not need.

Ouch. That would be a brutal critique from a rival let alone a colleague. Apparently the war party has not secured its own base and the eagerness to play chicken with a fellow nuclear power has limited support even among DC’s deep state intellectuals.

The Neocon and Liberal Interventionist belief in the “unipolar world”, and in the necessity take action to preserve the illusion of this state is harming both our own foreign policy interests as well as the rest of the world.

It is Ironic that this News Comes Out Just Before Tết

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The US is looking to expand its supply of arms to the Ukraine:

With Russian-backed separatists pressing their attacks in Ukraine, NATO’s military commander, Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, now supports providing defensive weapons and equipment to Kiev’s beleaguered forces, and an array of administration and military officials appear to be edging toward that position, American officials said Sunday.

President Obama has made no decisions on providing such lethal assistance. But after a series of striking reversals that Ukraine’s forces have suffered in recent weeks, the Obama administration is taking a fresh look at the question of military aid.

Secretary of State John Kerry, who plans to visit Kiev on Thursday, is open to new discussions about providing lethal assistance, as is Gen. Martin E. Dempsey, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, officials said. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who is leaving his post soon, backs sending defensive weapons to the Ukrainian forces.

It appears that the only person with any sanity left in the Obama administration is Susan Rice:

In recent months, Susan E. Rice, Mr. Obama’s national security adviser, has resisted proposals to provide lethal assistance, several officials said. But one official who is familiar with her views insisted that Ms. Rice was now prepared to reconsider the issue.

It’s interesting that the person that Barack Obama has been determined to keep on his staff, John Seymour McCain III, in a fit of infantile pique blocked her nomination to Secretary of State is stopping this, for now at least.

In some ways, it’s a good thing.

He could be listening to the slavering war monger that is Samantha Powers on this.

BTW, the usual crop of DC psychopaths has weighed in:

Fueling the broader debate over policy is an independent report to be issued Monday by eight former senior American officials, who urge the United States to send $3 billion in defensive arms and equipment to Ukraine, including anti-armor missiles, reconnaissance drones, armored Humvees and radars that can determine the location of enemy rocket and artillery fire.

Michèle A. Flournoy, a former senior Pentagon official who is a leading candidate to serve as defense secretary if Hillary Rodham Clinton is elected president, joined in preparing the report. Others include James G. Stavridis, a retired admiral who served as the top NATO military commander, and Ivo Daalder, the ambassador to NATO during Mr. Obama’s first term.

“The West needs to bolster deterrence in Ukraine by raising the risks and costs to Russia of any renewed major offensive,” the report says. “That requires providing direct military assistance — in far larger amounts than provided to date and including lethal defensive arms.”

They don’t get it.

Russia sees this as an existential issue, and they see US actions, from the expansion of NATO to the multiple coups engineered in the Ukraine and other former Soviet republics under the guise of “color revolutions” as a part of a war that has continued to be waged against Russia since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Truth is, I agree with the Russian view on this.

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, we have seen this sort of insanity become a fixture of US foreign policy.

The US believes that it can enforce its preferred solution anywhere in the world, even when it does not serve any meaningful interest of America.

There is also the small fact that the Ukrainian military really does not exist as a particularly functional entity.

It has had to be backed up by Fascist militias, and its attempts to use conscription have been met with protests, an orgy of draft dodging, and the mass purchase sinecures as priests.

And these idiots in the Pentagon and White House are determined to go to war with Russia because their latest color revolution did not go exactly as planned.

BTW, Those People Saying that Greece has no Leverage? It’s Bullsh%$

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Greece, the only Eastern Orthodox Christian nation in the Eurozone, has a number of close cultural ties to Russia.

What’s more, Russian tourism, which has been hurt by sanctions, is a big part of their economy.

It is not in Greece’s national interest to extend the sanctions, and I expect the new PM, and whoever ends up his Foreign Minister are likely to make this clear on any negotiations with the ECB and EU:

The first test for Syriza would be its stance toward European sanctions on Russia. EU measures including curbs on financing for Russian state-owned banks and a ban on the export of sophisticated energy-exploration equipment will lapse in July unless renewed unanimously by the 28 EU governments.

July is the same deadline for the continuation for Greece’s bailout.

I’m pretty sure that Greece could get a decent deal from Russia if it voted against sanctions.

Smells like leverage to me.

The Push-Back Against the Lindsey Graham Presidential Needs to Get Less Awful

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Let’s be clear here:  Senator Lindsey Graham is a blithering idiot, whose only claim to policy expertise is his playing ventriloquist dummy to petulant child Senator John Sidney McCain III’s harebrained “Forever War” foreign policy initiatives.

This is a guy who has literally been wrong on absolutely every foreign policy initiative that he has ever been a part of.

He makes Richard Bruce Cheney look level headed and competent.

These are all legitimate reasons for him to be criticized, and ridiculed, for his recent statements about running for President.

There is also the issue of his personal affect.

Specifically, for lack of a better term, he minces almost as much as Michelle Bachmann’s husband Marcus.  (Not that there’s anything wrong with that)

So, over the past few days, we have been bombarded with tasteless cartoons and Photoshop jobs mocking the (never Married, not that there’s anything wrong with that) distinguished gentleman from South Carolina.  (I’m talking to you, Howie Klein)

Lindsey Graham sucks, both as a potential candidate, and even more so as a potential President.

It simply does not matter whatever else he does, or does not suck.

The Phrase “Bad Optics” Doesn’t Even Begin to Describe This………

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The German government has selected former SS Barracks at the Buchenwald concentration camp to house asylum seekers:

Plans to house asylum seekers in a former SS barracks at a Nazi concentration camp are causing controversy in Germany.

 Local authorities in the city of Schwerte, in western Germany, want to house 21 asylum seekers in a Nazi-era barracks believed to have been used by SS guards at a local outpost of the notorious Buchenwald concentration camp.

 Germany is facing an acute shortage of accommodation for asylum-seekers while their claims are assessed. A huge influx of refugees, many of them fleeing the violence in Syria and Iraq, has left official shelters overcrowded and forced local authorities to improvise alternatives.

 But the Schwerte authorities have been accused of bad taste over their decision to use a former SS barracks building to make up the shortfall.

 “This is not a normal place, not just anywhere, but a place of exploitation, oppression and unbounded violence,” Christine Glauning, director of the Documentation Centre for Nazi Forced Labour, told Spiegel magazine’s website.

Seriously?

Don’t Jump to Conclusions on the Sony Hack

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Bruce Schneier, perhaps the most prominent security pundit in the world, is dubious about the FBI’s claim that the DPRK is behind the Sony Hack, while Kurt Stammberger, the senior VP Norse, a cybersecurity firm, insists that all evidence points to an internal hack:

Cybersecurity experts are questioning the FBI’s claim that North Korea is responsible for the hack that crippled Sony Pictures. Kurt Stammberger, a senior vice president with cybersecurity firm Norse, told CBS News his company has data that doubts some of the FBI’s findings.

“Sony was not just hacked, this is a company that was essentially nuked from the inside,” said Stammberger.

While Norse is not involved in the Sony case, it has done its own investigation.

“We are very confident that this was not an attack master-minded by North Korea and that insiders were key to the implementation of one of the most devastating attacks in history,” said Stammberger.

He says Norse data is pointing towards a woman who calls herself “Lena” and claims to be connected with the so-called “Guardians of Peace” hacking group. Norse believes it’s identified this woman as someone who worked at Sony in Los Angeles for ten years until leaving the company this past May.

I’m inclined not to believe the official story from the FBI.

The sketchy accounts currently given by the FBI seem to indicate that they worked backward, starting with the guilt of North Korea, and then picking and choosing evidence on that basis.

Guess What? The Senate Report Reveals that Torture Worked?

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At least it works if your goal is to force a prisoner to lie about Saddam Hussein’s connections to Al Qaeda to justify our invading Iraq:

………

Such is the case with the “debate” on whether torture “worked” following the release of the Select Committee on Intelligence report on the CIA’s “Detention and Interrogation Program.”

On the one side, we have among others Dianne Feinstein: “The big finding is that torture doesn’t work and shouldn’t be employed by our country” she told PBS. Similarly, a headline in the Hill tells us: “McCain: ‘I know from personal experience’ torture doesn’t work.”

Then, we have six former directors and deputy directors of the CIA claiming the “interrogation program” “saved thousands of lives” by helping to capture al-Qaeda members. On this score, the Intelligence Committee report seems to have the goods, quoting CIA emails. While the former CIA directors claim a string successes based on torture: “KSM [Khalid Sheik Muhammed] then led us to Riduan Isamuddin, aka Hambali, East Asia’s chief al Qaeda ally and the perpetrator of the 2002 Bali bombing in Indonesia — in which more than 200 people perished.” But the report quotes a CIA official’s internal emails: “Frankly, we stumbled onto Hambali.”

But that doesn’t mean Feinstein and McCain are right and that’s the end of story. The truth is that torture did work, but not the way its defenders claim. It worked to produce justifications for policies the establishment wanted, like the Iraq war. This is actually tacitly acknowledged in the report — or one should say, it’s buried in it. Footnote 857 of the report is about Ibn Shaykh al-Libi, who was captured in Afghanistan shortly after the U.S. invasion and was interrogated by the FBI. He told them all he knew, but then the CIA rendered him to the brutal Mubarak regime in Egypt, in effect outsourcing their torture. From the footnote:

“Ibn Shaykh al-Libi reported while in [censored: ‘Egyptian’] custody that Iraq was supporting al-Qa’ida and providing assistance with chemical and biological weapons. Some of this information was cited by Secretary Powell in his speech at the United Nations, and was used as a justification for the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Ibn Shaykh al-Libi recanted the claim after he was rendered to CIA custody on February [censored], 2003, claiming that he had been tortured by the [censored, likely ‘Egyptians’], and only told them what he assessed they wanted to hear. For more more details, see Volume III.” Of course, Volume III has not been made public.

So, while CIA head John Brennan now says it’s “unknowable” if torture lead to information that actually saved lives, it’s provable that torture lead to information that helped lead to war and destroyed lives.

………

This was somewhat acknowledged in the other Senate report on torture, released by the Armed Services Committee in 2008. It quoted Maj. Paul Burney, who worked as a psychiatrist at Guantanamo Bay prison: “A large part of the time we were focused on trying to establish a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq and we were not successful. The more frustrated people got in not being able to establish that link … there was more and more pressure to resort to measures that might produce more immediate results.” The GTMO Interrogation Control Element Chief, David Becker told the Armed Services Committee he was urged to use more aggressive techniques, being told at one point “the office of Deputy Secretary of Defense [Paul] Wolfowitz had called to express concerns about the insufficient intelligence production at GTMO.”

So, torture works if you are planning to create false intelligence to justify a phony war which leads to the biggest military and diplomatic disaster in US History.

So it was all about amusing Dick Cheney.

They generate false intel, and Dick gets that war that he wanted so badly.

And the Plane that the USAF has Hated Since Its Introduction is Deployed to Iraq

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Even as they are trying to kill it, the A-10 Warthog deployed for combat service in Iraq:

The low- and slow-flying A-10 Warthog jet is back in the Middle East—seven years after the attack planes withdrew.

The prospect of A-10s joining the war against Islamic State was subject to rumors in September, when elements of the Indiana Air National Guard’s 122nd Fighter Wing—which flies the twin-engine A-10—deployed to Southwest Asia.

While it’s not clear whether the Indiana A-10s have carried out any strikes against Islamic State yet … they surely will soon. The Warthogs’ mission is to provide close-air support to Iraqi army and police and Kurdish Peshmerga troops fighting on the ground.

An Air Force spokesman confirmed to Air Force magazine that the A-10s “will only be supporting military requirements in the Gulf region, including but not limited to, Operation Inherent Resolve.”

Inherent Resolve is the Pentagon’s code name for air strikes and other U.S.-led efforts targeting Islamic State.

This is not a surprise.

The demands of the tactical situation on the ground require an aircraft like the A-10, but the Air Force has been indifferent to the tactical situation on the ground since before it was an independent service (Bill Mauldin notes this in his memoir The Brass Ring, which covers his experiences in WWII).

Considering the level of dysfunctionalality in the Pentagon, the fact that the US Air Force is probably the most dysfunctional service truly scary.

Bush With Tan ……… Again

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Yes, it turns out that our exit from Afghanistan won’t be an exit:

President Obama decided in recent weeks to authorize a more expansive mission for the military in Afghanistan in 2015 than originally planned, a move that ensures American troops will have a direct role in fighting in the war-ravaged country for at least another year.

Mr. Obama’s order allows American forces to carry out missions against the Taliban and other militant groups threatening American troops or the Afghan government, a broader mission than the president described to the public earlier this year, according to several administration, military and congressional officials with knowledge of the decision. The new authorization also allows American jets, bombers and drones to support Afghan troops on combat missions.

………

The decision to change that mission was the result of a lengthy and heated debate that laid bare the tension inside the Obama administration between two often-competing imperatives: the promise Mr. Obama made to end the war in Afghanistan, versus the demands of the Pentagon that American troops be able to successfully fulfill their remaining missions in the country.

Once again, we see the pattern.

Obama knows what the right thing to do is, but he has to accommodate the ones who f%$%#ed up in the first place, much like he did with Obamacare.

I understand the desire to be a conciliator, particularly given Obama’s life story, but the role of POTUS is to be the adult in the room, because the Pentagon cannot be.

The generals, and the civilian side of the defense establishment, is simply incapable of making the call to cut their losses and leave.

They subscribe to the Green Lantern theory of Geopolitics, in which the limits of American military might are limited only by the will, and where any realistic examination of the risks and rewards are assiduously eschewed.

This is insane.

The Pentagon wants its War, and Now they are Waging a War of Leaks

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We now get leaks of the military complaining that the Obama administration is “micromanaging” operations in Iraq and Syria:

Top military leaders in the Pentagon and in the field are growing increasingly frustrated by the tight constraints the White House has placed on the plans to fight ISIS and train a new Syrian rebel army.

As the American-led battle against ISIS stretches into its fourth month, the generals and Pentagon officials leading the air campaign and preparing to train Syrian rebels are working under strict White House orders to keep the war contained within policy limits. The National Security Council has given precise instructions on which rebels can be engaged, who can be trained, and what exactly those fighters will do when they return to Syria. Most of the rebels to be trained by the U.S. will never be sent to fight against ISIS.

………

Other gripes among the top Pentagon and military brass are about the White House’s decision not to work with what’s left of the existing Syrian moderate opposition on the ground, which prevents intelligence sharing on fighting ISIS and prevents the military from using trained fighters to build the new rebel army that President Obama has said is needed to push Syrian President Bashar al-Assad into a political negotiation to end the conflict.

The New York Times reported Wednesday that Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel himself is among the critics of Obama’s strategy in Syria. Hagel wrote a memo last week to Rice warning that Obama’s Syria strategy was unclear about U.S. intentions with respect to Assad, undermining the plan.

What is going on here is that the Pentagon, including Hegel want the US to move aggressively for regime change in Syria, because they feel that it is their God given right to wage war with, and overthrow, whoever they want.

We’ve seen what happens if they get their way, the clusterf%$#s that are commonly known as Iraq and Libya.

The fact that the adults in the White House (there is an expression I never thought that I would say) are telling the war mongers in the Pentagon that they cannot topple yet another government just because, they are leaking to the press.

The Banality of Evil at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

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The New York Times is reporting that Obama asked for a report from the CIA on the effectiveness of covert to rebels, and it revealed that it was an almost unbroken string of failure:

The Central Intelligence Agency has run guns to insurgencies across the world during its 67-year history — from Angola to Nicaragua to Cuba. The continuing C.I.A. effort to train Syrian rebels is just the latest example of an American president becoming enticed by the prospect of using the spy agency to covertly arm and train rebel groups.

 An internal C.I.A. study has found that it rarely works.

 The still-classified review, one of several C.I.A. studies commissioned in 2012 and 2013 in the midst of the Obama administration’s protracted debate about whether to wade into the Syrian civil war, concluded that many past attempts by the agency to arm foreign forces covertly had a minimal impact on the long-term outcome of a conflict. They were even less effective, the report found, when the militias fought without any direct American support on the ground.

 ………

 But in April 2013, President Obama authorized the C.I.A. to begin a program to arm the rebels at a base in Jordan, and more recently the administration decided to expand the training mission with a larger parallel Pentagon program in Saudi Arabia to train “vetted” rebels to battle fighters of the Islamic State, with the aim of training approximately 5,000 rebel troops per year.

George W. Bush was drooling idiot, and Richard Bruce Cheney is, well, Dick Cheney.  They don’t know any any better.

Barack Obama had doubts, and got research done, found out that it was a fool’s errand, and then he went ahead and did it anyway.

Barack Obama is in a very much a hostage of the inside the Beltway/Council on Foreign Relations bellicose consensus, which has led us to nothing but ruin since at least our little adventure in Indochina.

What’s more he is an enthusiastically willing hostage of this whole bomb/drone/invade everything and let God sort them out consensus, but he knows better.

If he didn’t he would not have called for the CIA study on backing insurgents.

But he let loose the dogs of war, even though he knew better:

What’s worse: Launching a disastrous military campaign under false pretenses to achieve goals you wrongly believe are attainable? Or launching a disastrous military campaign you know is doomed in order to help your party win an election?

I ask in light of today’s New York Times story about how President Obama asked the CIA a while back whether arming rebel forces – pretty much the agency’s signature strategy — had ever worked in the past.

He was told that it almost never has.

But then in June, once the political pressure for intervention in Syria got too great, he did just that — sending weapons to rebels fighting the Syrian military.

Yes: He knew better, but he did it anyway.

………

As it happens, Syria is hardly the first or most significant place Obama has used his power as Commander-in-Chief in ways that get people slaughtered, even though he knew better, primarily for political purposes.

Obama’s biggest such decision killed a lot of American servicemembers who he sent to fight and die in Afghanistan.
 During his 2008 presidential campaign, which was marked by his opposition to the war in Iraq, then-Senator Obama’s vow to re-engage in Afghanistan was seen by many as a ploy to avoid being cast as a dove, first by Hillary Clinton and then by John McCain.

What’s not clear to this day is precisely when Obama knew better; when he realized that the war in Afghanistan was hopeless.

By inauguration time, that conclusion seemed fairly obvious to many foreign-policy watchers. So why not him?

But one month into his presidency, Obama announced he was sending more troops there – 30,000, as it would turn out. Despite the obvious lack of what he himself had frequently described as a must — an exit strategy – he increased the number of troops in Afghanistan by 50 percent. And the monthly death tolls shot up.

Over 1,600 American servicemembers  have died in Afghanistan since the summer of 2009 — well over half of all the dead during the entire war – along with countless Afghans.

There were public signs in November 2009 that Obama was “rethinking” his plan. David Sanger, in his book Confront and Conceal, wrote that Obama actually began a “reassessment of whether the war was as necessary as he first believed” even earlier, in the summer of 2009. (At an off-the-record June 2009 dinner with historians the “main point” his guests tried to make was “that pursuit of war in Afghanistan would be for him what Vietnam was to Lyndon Johnson,” Garry Wills wrote  later.)

Unlike Dan Froomkin’s analysis above, I am slightly more charitable.  I do not think that politics was the primary motivation.

This is cowardice and hypocrisy, not the stupidity of Bush, or the violent delusions of Cheney.

On a moral level, this is worse than Bush, because he has the tools to do the right thing, and he chooses not to use them.

Not the Onion

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You can get a slightly translation in the subtitles

A motorcycle gang from the Netherlands is going to Syria to fight ISIS:

Already battling air strikes from the US and its allies, including the UK, terrorist organisation Isis (Islamic State) now have a new threat to look out for – a motorbike gang from the Netherlands.

The Dutch bikers, who go by the name No Surrender, reportedly journeyed to Iraq to fight alongside Kurdish troops against IS militants last week.

Charged with commenting on the legality of that move, the Dutch public prosecutor said that the bikers are not necessarily committing any crime.

Prosecutor spokesman Wim de Bruin told AFP: “Joining a foreign armed force was previously punishable, now it’s no longer forbidden.”

“You just can’t join a fight against the Netherlands.”

If it weren’t for the likelihood, that they are going to end up on the next ISIS beheading videos, the skills associated with being a bad-ass biker are not necessarily the same as those required for urban or desert warfare against a dedicated foe who is not constrained by the requirements of law enforcement in a western society.

This is not going to end well.

This is Just Plain Weird

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One of the passengers on doomed Malaysian Airlines was found wearing an oxygen mask:

Dutch Foreign Minister Frans Timmermans has said that one of the 298 people killed in the downing of a Malaysia Airlines plane over eastern Ukraine was found wearing an oxygen mask.

He indicated that not everybody on board had died instantly when the plane was hit by a missile.

An initial report said flight MH17 broke up in mid-air after being pierced by objects at high velocity.

………
The Dutch public prosecutor has confirmed that an oxygen mask was found, although a spokesman said it was around the passenger’s neck rather than their mouth. It had been secured with elastic and has been tested for DNA and fingerprints.

The plane had been flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur on 17 July when it went down over rebel-held territory. Pro-Russian separatist leaders deny shooting it down with a missile.

Although 196 of the passengers were Dutch, the passenger with the oxygen mask was not, the prosecutor said on Thursday. Dutch media said the victim in question was an Australian and the family had been informed about the development.

Needless to say, the tinfoil hat crowd is going crazy over this.

I’m not sure if this means anything beyond some of the oxygen masks deploying before the plane broke up in mid air (confirmed from radar readings).

Still, this is f%$#ing weird.

Joe Biden Speaks the Truth

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So of course, he had to apologize for it:

A diplomatic rift between Turkey and the United States was patched over late Saturday after the American vice president, Joseph R. Biden Jr., officially apologized to Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, for remarks suggesting that Turkey helped facilitate the rise of the Islamic State terrorist group.

In remarks at Harvard University on Thursday, Mr. Biden said Mr. Erdogan had admitted erring in allowing foreign fighters to cross Turkey’s border into Syria, eventually leading to the formation of the group, also known as ISIS and ISIL.

Mr. Biden’s spokeswoman, Kendra Barkoff, said in an emailed statement that the two leaders spoke by phone on Saturday. “The vice president apologized for any implication that Turkey or other allies and partners in the region had intentionally supplied or facilitated the growth of ISIL or other violent extremists in Syria,” Ms. Barkoff said. “The United States greatly values the commitments and sacrifices made by our allies and partners from around the world to combat the scourge of ISIL, including Turkey.”

………

Mr. Erdogan, despite widespread evidence to the contrary, denied that Turkey’s long, porous border had enabled thousands of militants to cross onto the Syrian and Iraqi battlefields since the Syrian civil war began in 2011. “Foreign fighters never crossed into Syria from our country,” Mr. Erdogan said. “They would cross into Syria from Turkey on tourist passports, but nobody can claim that they have crossed with arms.”

Seriously? How f%$#ing stupid do we think we are?

BTW, this is what Biden said:

Speaking at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, Mr. Biden said allies including Turkey, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates had extended unconditional financial and logistical support to Sunni fighters trying to oust the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad.

“President Erdogan told me,” he said, according to the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet, “ ‘You were right. We let too many people through. Now we are trying to seal the border.’

“Our allies poured hundreds of millions of dollars and tens of thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against al-Assad,” he said, including jihadists planning to join the Nusra Front and Al Qaeda.

I think that the appropriate response to Erdogan’s hissy fit is to tell him to go pound sand, which is why I would make a lousy diplomat.

He, and rest of the Sunni hegemonists were hip deep in supporting Al Qaedal linked militants, and Saudi Arabia directly supported what would become ISIS in their bid to overthrow the Assad regime.

The fact that this is not a part of the dialog about the US intervention in Iraq and Syria is a sign of just how completely the House of Saud owns our foreign policy apparatus.

We are Halfway to Boots on the Ground in Iraq

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We are now deploying attack helicopters to Iraq:

The United States sent attack helicopters into combat against Islamic State targets west of Baghdad on Sunday, the first time low-flying Army aircraft have been committed to fighting in an engagement that the Obama administration has promised would not include “boots on the ground.”

The U.S. Central Command, in a statement about U.S. activities against the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, provided few specifics about the helicopters. But they were likely AH-64 Apache attack helicopters, which were deployed to Baghdad International Airport in June to provide protection for U.S. military and diplomatic facilities.

Until Sunday, U.S. airstrikes in Iraq have been limited to fast-moving Air Force and Navy fighter aircraft and drones. But the use of the relatively slow-flying helicopters represents an escalation of American military involvement and is a sign that the security situation in Iraq’s Anbar province is deteriorating. Last week, the Islamic State militants overran numerous Iraqi bases and towns and were becoming a widespread presence in Abu Ghraib, the last major town outside of Baghdad’s western suburbs.

Jeffrey White, a former senior Defense Intelligence Agency analyst who closely follows developments in Iraq, said the use of helicopter gunships by the United States means that U.S. troops effectively are now directly involved in ground battles.

(emphasis mine)

Note that, notwithstanding their design for damage resistance, Apaches have been taken down by small arms fire.

Add a few ZSUs (self propelled anti-aircraft artillery) to the mix, and we are going be have helicopters shot down, and either a very risky rescue mission or US troops held prisoner.

We are going to be back in ground combat sooner rather than later.

Barack Obama now owns the “stupid war” that he opposed in 2003.